Maya Angelou’s empowering and moving memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is newly introduced and illustrated in this beautifully crafted Folio edition.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Introduced and with a picture selection by Hilton Als
Joan Didion’s visceral view of 1960s America is told in her first collection of journalism, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, presented in a new edition by Folio. Introduction and image selection by Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Hilton Als.
£90.00
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‘The great American writer Joan Didion... I remain grateful for the day I picked up Slouching Towards Bethlehem and realised that a woman could speak without hedging her bets, without hemming and hawing, without sounding pleasant or sweet, without deference, and even without doubt...I am part of a great army of women writers in her debt.’
Zadie Smith
Slouching Towards Bethlehem is Joan Didion's seminal essay collection in which she narrates the political and social climate of 1960s America through the unique lens that would soon establish her as a supreme chronicler of American life. In 20 crackingly sharp essays, Didion addresses the beauty, ugliness and fragility of the decade: the slippage of the Californian Dream; the hippy counterculture of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco; the recent case of a California suburban housewife who, one night when they ran out of milk, set fire to her husband; a Las Vegas wedding chapel; a millionaire bunkered in his mansion, and a handful of personal pieces including musings about returning home to Sacramento for a family visit and a beautiful elegy for her younger self on first going to live in New York.
Bound in blocked textured paper printed with a portrait of Joan Didion by Don Bachardy
Set in Kennerley with Windsor as display
280 pages
18 pages of illustrations
Ribbon marker
Plain slipcase
8¾˝ x 5½˝
Printed in Germany
'What I wanted to do with this illustrated version of her text was to sharpen our eyes to what Joan already saw all those years ago in California, in New York, out in the world: our dreams turned to dust and flowers growing in the dust.'
- Hilton Als, from his introduction
Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and art curator, Hilton Als, has selected unusual, unexpected and inspiring images that present a wonderful portrait of Didion and her times. Images include photography by Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand, as well as paintings, watercolours and photos of Didion herself. Hilton Als has also contributed an introductory essay on Didion's work and a new foreword in which he writes about how he brought together words and images to create this unique edition.
Part I: Life Styles in the Golden Land
Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream
John Wayne: A Love Song
Where the Kissing Never Stops
Comrade Laski, C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)
7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38
California Dreaming
Marrying Absurd
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Part II: Personals
On Keeping a Notebook
On Self-Respect
I Can’t Get That Monster Out of My Mind
On Morality
On Going Home
Part III: Seven Places of the Mind
Notes from a Native Daughter
Letter from Paradise, 21° 19ʹ N., 157° 52ʹ W.
Rock of Ages
The Seacoast of Despair
Guaymas, Sonora
Los Angeles Notebook
Goodbye to All That
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